Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Top Thrill 2 Announced for Cedar Point's 2024 Season


© Cedar Point
After a veeeery long period of fan speculation, Cedar Point has announced that Top Thrill 2 will be joining the park's lineup of scream machines when it opens for guests in 2024.  The reimagined Top Thrill Dragster roller coaster will reopen as the "world's tallest and fastest triple-launch strata-coaster" with the addition of a brand new, 420 foot tall spike along the ride's layout.


© Cedar Point
Here's the grand view of the coaster, with the new spike on the left and the existing tower down the track to the right.  The new tower will be the exact same height as the original tower, and the entire ride will feature dark gray supports and mostly white track with some red accent track pieces up high.  A new switch track piece will allow the ride's three trains to make their way around the layout.  The ride's existing station will be reused (with modifications) and the queue will be covered and located in the same place as it was previously.


© Cedar Point
Riders will be seated in the trains (which seat 20 riders total) and first launch forward at 74 miles per hour.  The trains will move up the original tower some, then fall backward and hit another launch to a speed of 101 miles per hour.  At this point they will head up the new, 420 foot tall spike tower that's angled at 90 degrees from the ground below.


© Cedar Point
After the trains plummet down that spike they will hit a final launch that sends the trains to 120 miles per hour and up and over the top hat.  The track layout of the top hat and the remainder of the ride will remain the same.  The total track length covered will be 3,422 feet and Top Thrill 2 will have a 52 inch height requirement.


Top Thrill 2 is being created for Cedar Point by Zamperla, which is showing its expanded roller coaster capabilities with this and other future projects.  The company will use their new Lightning trains on Top Thrill 2, which utilize lightweight aluminum bodies and no welds at all to allow for lower maintenance and operating costs - and in the case of this ride better launch capabilities.  And on that note, Top Thrill 2 will utilize a newly installed LSM launch system when it opens next year.

 

Below is a great off-ride animation of the Top Thrill 2 experience, check it out!



2 comments:

BunnyHugger said...

Poor Iron Dragon lost even more of its woods. It's going to be a dragon without a lair at this rate. I will always miss how it was in the 80s and 90s with all that seclusion around it.

Surya said...

I think this is a huge step back. The fact that the train will pass through the station 3 times will lower the capacity dramatically. But most of all: riders will no longer feel that mind blowing acceleration as now 3 launches to get to the same speed. Sad.